CHANUKA ISSUE, December 24, 1959
JEWISH WESTERN BULLETIN
7
The Spinning Top
By SHOLEM ALEICHEM
I
T is true that games of cards-
bridge and whist, for example, which are played at "Chanuka' nowadays have more sense in them than the old game of spinning-tops. But when the play is for money, it makes no difference what it is. I once saw two peasant-boys beating one another's heads agamst the wall. When I asked them wKy they were doing this, if they were out of their minds, they told me to go to my road. They were playing a game, for money, .which of them would get tired the soonest of having his head banged on the wall.
The game of spintiing-tops that have four corners each marked with a letter of the alphabet, and are like dice, is very exciting. One can lose one's soul playing it. It is not so much the loss of the money as the annoyance of losing. Why should the other win? Why shoiild the top fall on the letter G for him, and on the N for you? I suppose you know what the four letters stand for? N means no us,e. H means half. B means bad. And G means good. The top is a sort of lottery. Whoever is fortunate wins. Take, for example, Benny "Polkovoi." No, matter how often he spins the top, it always falls on the letter G.
The boys said it was curious how Benny won. They kept putting down their money. Hq. took their bets. What did he care? He was a rich boy.
"G again. It's curious," they cried, and again opened their purses and staked their money. Benny whirled the , top. It spun round and round, and wobbled from side to side, like a drunkard and fell down.
"G", said Benny.
"G, G. Again G. It's extraordinary," said the boys, scratching their heads and again openiiig their purses.
Benny showed us his smartness and his quick-wittedness so long, until our pockets were n empty. He thrust his hands in his pockets, as if challenging us—"Well, who wants more?"
One of the^boys became so absorbed in the play that he was not satisfied to lose only his "Chanuka" money, but went on gambling through the whole eight days of the festival.
And that boy was no other than myself, "the widow's son".
* * ♦
You must not ask where the widow's boy got the money to play with. The great gamblers of the world who have lost and won fortunes, estates and inheritances—they will know and understand. Woe is me! May the hour never be known on which the evil spirit of gambling takes hold of one! There is nothing too hard for him. He breaks into houses, gets through iron walls, and does the most
I terrible thing imaginable. It's a name to conjure with—the spirit of gamb-I ling.
First of all, I began to make money by selling everything I possessed, one thing after the other, my pocket-knife, and all my buttons. I had a box that opened and closed, and some wheels of an old clock—^good brass wheels that shone like, the sun when they were polished. I sold them all at any price, flew off, and lost all my money to Benny.
I was left almost naked. I even sold my little prayer-book. O that prayer-book, that prayer-book! When I think of it my heart aches, and my face burns with shame. It was an ornament not a book. My mother bought it of Pethachiah the pedlar, on the anniversary of my father's death. And it was a book of books—^a good one, a real good one, thick, and full of everything. It had every prayer one could mention, the "Song of Songs", the ethics of the Fathers, and the Psalms, and the "Haggadah", and all the prayers of the whole year round. Then the print and the binding, and the gold
letteripg. It was full of everything, I tell you.
"Ah, mother, you should see the fine thing Pethachiah the pedlar has."
"^\fhat sort of thing?" asked my mother.
t
"A little prayer-book. If I had such a prayer-book, I would—^I don't know myself what I would do."
"Haven't you got a prayer-book? And where is your father's prayer-book?" '
"You can't compare them. This is an ornament, and my book is only a book."
"An ornament?" repeated my mother. "Are there then more prayers
(Continued on page 8)
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